Ship of nightmares

So, five very rich men have now joined the 1500 mostly very far from rich people who died when the Titanic sank 111 years ago. The extensive - and expensive - search for their submersible has generated a mass of headlines and lots of screen time and, while it’s been moderately interesting to follow, it’s hard not to miss the sharp contrast with that other recent sinking, in the Mediterranean. Viz this very pointed cartoon in The Times yesterday. 

Recap: last week a fishing boat hideously crammed with migrants from Libya trying to escape to Italy sank off Greece. Some men on the top deck were rescued, while around 500 mostly women and children trapped down below drowned, their bodies so far unrecovered. It was initially in the news, but soon dropped out of sight, especially once the Titan submersible got into trouble. 

Amongst all the dreary conclusions to be drawn here (as well, of course, as acknowledging that any life accidentally lost, even of self-indulgent billionaires, is tough), the one I'm focusing on is our apparently never-ending fascination with the Titanic. It's inescapable, in our culture. I mean, like me, you've seen the movie, right? At least once, I bet, and quite possibly several times - you're certainly super-familiar with the quotes and iconic scenes. And, if you've gone overseas much, you'll have come across Titanic displays in various museums and possibly even one of the travelling exhibitions. The big one that's in New York right now I saw in Copenhagen - in 2011. It's still going!

I've certainly seen my share of Titanic stuff, from Jack Dawson's grave in Halifax to a note in a bottle thrown overboard by a passenger in Cobh, Ireland. And of course it's impossible to visit Belfast without going to their striking Titanic museum near the shipyard where it was built. That it was opened a century after the sinking tells you all you need to know about people's morbid fascination with mass deaths. See also my last post (er, also the Last Post) - but especially if there's something glamorous about it. 

Not that the bulk of Titanic's drowned passengers were, nor those on the fishing boat: just poor people trying to start new and hopefully more successful lives than those they were escaping. Nothing glamorous there, at all.

And for today’s tenuous connection, I’m currently sorting out a trip to Wairarapa, which is where James Cameron lives on his huge farm. 

Dunedin rocks. Sort of...

I know it's a privilege, but it also feels quite odd, to be writing a *cough* column about the Organ Pipes just outside Dunedin, which I haven't actually visited, and referencing in it Iceland's Reynisfjara and Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway, both of which I have.

I could also add Bishop and Clerk on Maria Island, Tasmania, and the Gawler Ranges in South Australia. All of them are spectacular and fascinating: weathered hexagonal columns of rock (basalt or dolerite), either upright or horizontal or both, but always fitted together with marvellous precision. 

Though of course, they're not at all - fitted together, that is. They're actually formed by a mass of molten lava cooling at precisely the right speed and in the perfect conditions for the rock to crack into that particular pattern. It's still a marvel, though, that something as raw and violent and unpredictable as an eruption can result in something so satisfyingly neat and geometrical. 

I'm a sucker for them every time. They can be found all over the world, and I would love to see more of them, one day. Probably, though, I should start with Dunedin.

Hello, 2022

Happy New Year. We've all been saying since 2016 'Let's hope it's better than last year' and that hasn't worked at all, so let's just aim to get to December 31 and be able to say 'Well, that was better than we expected' - ok?

I will also aim to pop in here more regularly, despite not really being much of a travel writer any more, for obvious reasons. I faded out towards the end of last year, waiting for a blog overhaul, but that still hasn't happened, so on we soldier.

One of my Christmas presents was a subscription to Storyworth, which I'd already heard good things about, and my second question to answer (chosen by the Baby) is 'What was your first big trip?'. That's a fun, if frustrating, one to answer because it was a round-world cruise to England, via both Suez and Panama, taking about six months. Fabulous! Except, it was 1957 and I was only three, and remember very little about it - mainly, getting trapped in the outside toilet at my grandparents' house in Farnham.

But, doing a little research, I have found, naturally, connections. Our first leg was the very last voyage of the RMS Mataroa which, after delivering us to Southampton via the Panama Canal, was then sent to be scrapped at Faslane. She had been built in 1922 at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, across from where the Silver Wind was moored on our 2019 Silversea cruise, and which had just been closed down. The ship, originally called Diogenes, carried passengers/immigrants to NZ and Australia, was a troop ship during the war, and then returned to tourism afterwards - though in 1949 she carried a contingent of the nearly 600 'Lost Children' from UK orphanages and foster homes who were brought to NZ in one of those shockingly authoritarian decisions that are sadly so common all over the world. (Also sent to Australia and Canada, many of them were maltreated, and, much later, officially apologised to.)

I had thought that our return voyage, on the SS Orcades via the Suez - a trip so hot everyone apparently slept up on deck - returned us to Lyttelton; but it turns out, from a random photo that my father usefully labelled, that we actually got off in Sydney and flew home from there. So that was my first flight, and not the joyride I had on Air NZ's new plane when I was about 14. And the Orcades? Well, I discovered a big model of that bit of my personal history in the Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour, when I arrived there on the Azamara Journey in 2017...

When life gives you lemons...

...make Guinness. Or at least sea glass Guinness to display in yesterday's sadly dishwasher-cracked glass that I've been drinking from for years since I was given it at a Tourism Ireland event. 

Back when tourism was giving agriculture a proper run for its money as NZ's biggest industry, events like that were fairly frequent and sociable treats for us solitary WFH travel writers. We'd gather happily at whatever venue had been selected - pub, restaurant, fancy hotel - and chat with our hosts and each other, enjoying the drinks and the snacks. We'd listen to the presentation with often genuine interest, pretend not to be disappointed when we didn't score the giveaway prize, chat again afterwards and eat and drink some more, before eventually trailing away home again. Not before, though, we had claimed our goodie bag containing pamphlets and flash-drives, yes, but also a selection of pens, notebooks, caps, chocolates, toiletries, scented candles, and, in TI's case, the glass we'd drunk our welcome Guinness from.

Not that, to be blunt, Guinness is actually welcomed by me as a drink - I much prefer a lighter brew, ideally (as regular 😀 readers are by now all too well aware) Montana-made Blue Moon. I still mourn its disappearance from bottle stores here, remembering the joy that accompanied its discovery just round the block from home, after being introduced to it in the exotic setting of Popeye's restaurant in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. But Guinness? Not a fan, despite having toured through the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, full of earnest and eager information, culminating on the top floor at the bar with the complimentary pint. I'm not alone, to judge by the sipped-and-discarded glasses left on tables by other visitors, which were then shamelessly claimed and emptied by proper enthusiasts.

No, what I enjoyed much more was the evening I spent in 2009 at Matt Molloy's pub in Westport (er, the Irish Westport) - not just because I was drinking cider, but because of the music and general vibe. Matt himself was there, but didn't sing, which would have been more disappointing if there hadn't been other people doing so well at generating such a mighty craic. There was an old man doing funny songs, a younger man full of enthusiasm on the eve of departing for New York to seek his fortune, a drunken Declan dancing, and in the main bar a casual gathering of session musicians: two fiddlers, a man on bodhrán (drum), someone on another sort of stringed instrument... they came and went, playing long medleys, everyone familiar with all the tunes. It was great.

To be sure, to be sure?

I got a notification today from the Tourism Northern Ireland media library that authorisation to publish images they'd supplied had expired. Naturally, I had no recollection of having had an Irish story published, and it took a bit of ferreting to discover that it was this one, about visiting Londonderry during my Silversea loop cruise from London, in August 2019.

That feels like another world now, doesn't it? Wandering the busy and storied streets of London, Fowey in Cornwall, Cork, Bantry, Belfast, Dublin and Holyhead. Eating in the ship's restaurants, crowding round tables in the bar for Trivial Pursuit, standing elbow-to-elbow at the railings above the bow as we made that magnificent entry up the Thames and under through Tower Bridge. (Although, it was on this cruise that we were both struck down by an epic bout of flu that almost had one of us in hospital, and just might have been pre-Covid?)

The story was published finally on 10 February 2020, just days before everything changed, it feels, forever. After our long spell of almost-normal freedom here in NZ, we're back in Level 4 lockdown nationally, our original single Delta case - which the rest of the world mocked us for panicking at - now, less than two weeks later, up to 562. Here in Auckland, the main location for cases, we've got another fortnight of L4 ahead of us, possibly longer, while everyone sensible scurries to get vaccinated - though it won't help that someone has just died from a rare reaction to the Pfizer vaccine.

So it's maybe good to be reminded of Londonderry, where they've certainly had their share of troubles, capital T and lower-case both. They've come through it all and manage to be pretty cheerful these days, though the tough times will always be there in the background, literally and figuratively. 

(In deference to Tourism NI, this is my own photo of the Four o'clock Knock mural.)

Until yesterday, iGNorant of a connection

I didn't mean to stalk Graham Norton. I didn't even know I'd done it. It was only yesterday, over a year later, when I was listening to an old RNZ interview with him and Kim Hill that I realised I'd done it. He mentioned how he liked living in Bantry because although, same as in London, he was recognised everywhere he went there, Bantry is so small that he can recognise people right back - supermarket checkout lady, petrol station guy, man who fixes the boiler - so it's fair.

Regular 😀 readers will recall that in August last year I went on a Silversea cruise from London, around Ireland, and back again. It was blighted by a terrible case of the flu/possible pre-Covid that laid us out for most of the trip - yes, I'm still coughing, thanks for asking - but, diligent as ever, I did force myself off Silver Wind at each port to do an explore. Bantry was a little gem: colourful old houses reflected in the waters of the harbour, bustling main street, picturesque ruined church with a wild cemetery outside, grand mansion up on a hill, lively history, passers-by full of banter with our funny guide... it was a treat, and well worth dragging myself out of what had been feeling would become my deathbed. It was, if further proof is needed, memorable enough for me to properly remember it, and not rely on my trusty notebook which, for the first time ever, I had no energy to actually write in:

Not enough contact to qualify as stalking? Fair comment. But before the cruise began, we had to be driven from our splendid hotel right next to Tower Bridge, where the ship was meant to be moored, way out to distant, and desolate, Tilbury Docks. That was because the wind had been too strong for the ship, despite its small size, to be safely sailed through the Thames Barrier and up the winding Thames through Tower Bridge to its mooring beside the Belfast. It was disappointing (though made up for at the end of the cruise, by doing exactly that) but it did mean we had a long and very expensive taxi tour, at Silversea's expense, from St Katharine's through, initially, Wapping. Which is where Graham has his London residence, our helpful driver told us. Helen Mirren too, apparently. (Gary was very chatty - it took him 4 years to do the Knowledge, part-time, which he reckoned was equally as necessary to the job as GPS.)

So, ok, maybe stalking is stretching it a bit. But two GN connections in one cruise, without even trying? Good enough for me.

Not so much of the fair city today, Dublin

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

We woke to stacks of Maersk containers this morning, with big cranes trundling up and down sorting them - who invented the container? I do remember the dockers' strikes when they were first introduced, with all their content security, thus depriving the workers of their tips. They really came into their own in Christchurch, post-earthquakes, propping some things up and making a protective barrier for others.

But anyway - Dublin. We're back in the Republic, and this is my third time in the city, I think - so I've done the obvious things, which I enjoyed, back in the glory days when I had health, and energy. Today, with neither, I shuttled into the centre, and was deposited alongside Merrion Square where the Oscar Wilde statue reclines improbably on its rock. 

I plodded through the streets, looking guiltily away as I passed numerous art galleries and museums no doubt full of treasures and interesting stories. There were flower-bedecked pubs, high-end and individual shops, buskers and a bloody-nosed man conversing cheerfully with some bemused policemen as passers-by eavesdropped. I fetched up at the rather lovely wrought-iron elegance of St Stephens Green shopping centre, where I bought paracetamol and decided I didn't feel strong enough to cope with the full-on banter of a HoHo bus commentary. For the same reason, I gave up on the idea of taking a train to the picturesque fishing village of Skerries, which I was sorry about.

So, getting lost innumerable times, literally walking in circles, coughing, sneezing and feeling so, so tired, I eventually found my way back to the shuttle stop, impeccably timing my arrival for the lunchtime break, so I sat there in the rain on some stone steps under my umbrella for over an hour, wishing many things were different.

Not that I was on a different ship, however. Crown Princess was moored nearby and veritably loomed over everything. It was immense - 3,000 passengers - and made little Silver Wind (294 pax) look like a dinghy. A friendly, personable and caring little dinghy.

Doing my best with Belfast

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

Another day, another grand old city - and another wasted opportunity, though I did my best, truly. It was my first visit to Belfast, and I really would have liked to do it justice, but tiresome health problems intervened and yet another nebuliser session with Silver Wind's doctor down in the bowels of the ship meant that we missed the departure time for the city tour we had booked - and paid for. Ouch.

But we soldiered on into town on the shuttle when we were free, and took a taxi to the Titanic museum, which was the high point of the tour we'd booked. It's a remarkable building, all angular and modern and silvery. Inside, it's very efficiently organised, and you follow a trail through it, covering everything to do with Belfast's marine history and the Titanic  in particular, from design to, well, destruction. There is a slightly silly gondola thing you sit in and are dangled around a shipyard mock-up, past all the stages. Most impressive was the riveting process, which was incredibly hard, hot, noisy and dangerous work, and the only relief from the repetitiveness must have been the terror that the RIVET CATCHERS diced with throughout their long shifts, literally catching the heated rivets (in a bucket) and passing them to the men who hammered them into place.

There are mock-ups of the interior, and lots of interesting facts such as there not being a laundry on the ship for all the tons of linens they used for sheets and tablecloths and so on - though they did have a drier so cloths that got wet didn't go mouldy. There were voice testimonies from survivors, radio messages from the rescue ships, video of the wreck (showing the captain's bath which - in a not-coincidence - the news a few days later reported has now disappeared). Fascinating.

The OH retired back to the Silver Wind then, but I carried on, walking doughtily along the bank of the River Lagan to the 10m tiled Salmon of Knowledge (you're meant to kiss its lips to glean something useful), to the modern Victoria Square shopping centre with its high domed observation deck overlooking the city, past the historic crooked Albert clock tower, various statues, and appealing pubs all with piles of metal beer kegs on the footpaths outside.

Then I gave up a bit too, and took a HoHo bus tour, not doing any hopping on or off, but getting quite a bit of exercise on the top deck swapping from side to side as the sights demanded, and also ducking under cover at the front when it rained. The live commentary was very good, full of appealingly bad jokes and sincere pride about George Best, but suitably serious about "the dark days of our Troubles" which was a big part of the tour, as we went along the Shankill Road, past some confronting street murals, Crumlin Jail, and the chillingly practical (and still used) Peace Wall. If I'd had the time, and the energy, I would have done a proper job of exploring this side of Belfast, full of such familiar names from the nightly TV news when I was living in England through the '80s.

But I didn't, so I trailed back to the ship, to gaze from our veranda at the hulking, yellow, and motionless Samson and Goliath cranes in the Harland and Wolff shipyard opposite - which, not coincidentally, besides the Titanic, also built HMS Belfast. The shipyard has been a huge part of Belfast's history, but just a week or so ago went into administration, falling silent apart from a cluster of protesting (former) workers outside the gates.

Helpful Roy, our butler, proudly presented us with our invitation to dine at La Dame, the intimate and exclusive Relais & Châteaux restaurant that's the only one on the ship you have to pay for ($60 each). We'd been too late to book for it, and there were no available tables any day - but somehow Roy had got us in. We didn't like to tell him we had no appetite whatsoever, so we dutifully trailed along, were seated with a flourish at our table with its fancy china, and proudly presented with the menu. I'd like to describe the culinary delights that I indulged in - but, with no hunger or even functioning tastebuds, the whole performance of preparation, presentation and service was entirely wasted on me. What a shame.

Golf and giants, history and a harpist

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

We moved early this morning from the rugged utility of the LSS jetty with its ranks of tanks full of oil and chemicals along to the, er, equally rugged utility of the cruise ship terminal, with its huge heap of scrap metal - both places a decent drive from Derry itself.

I was doing a ship excursion today: a full day's guided tour focused on visiting the Giant's Causeway. We drove through neat and pretty countryside, all fields and hedgerows and trees, listening to Adrian telling us the history of Ireland. That's a lot of ground to cover, especially since he started way, way back in the pagan days, and included invasions by Vikings, French, Spanish, Germans and, of course, the English. Unsurprisingly, he didn't get through it all, being distracted by disparaging, at considerable length, Scotch whisky amongst other things (bagpipes also, naturally).

The Visitor Centre at the Giant's Causeway is run by the National Trust and is modern, stylish and well done. I took the 15 minute walk down to the sea listening to the recordings on my electronic guide, and found myself at the Causeway feeling initially a bit underwhelmed. I saw similar basalt columns in Iceland last year, and they were immense and raw-looking. Here they are clearly more eroded, and aren't that high - but, picking my way around (and negotiating all the many other tourists inevitably most focused on their selfies) I came to accept their being accorded World Heritage status.

There are 40,000 of them, after all, up to 12 metres high (much of that length buried) and they do all fit together in a marvellously satisfying way. The sea broke white on the black ones at the bottom of the slope, while those higher up were redder. They are certainly a feature, leading from the hillside down and into the sea, and the legend that goes with them, of originally linking Ireland with Scotland and allowing the Scottish giant to come and threaten the Irish Finn McCool (saved by the cleverness of his wife Oonagh) is inventive. 

Finn McCool, incidentally, I've known about since my extreme youth, listening to a story often repeated on the Sunday morning Junior Request Session on the radio that my parents set up for me each week, to give them a bit more time in bed. "I'm bigger and stronger than you, Finn McCool!" was the catchphrase that entered my brain then and has never left.

Adrian took us then to go and see a rather dull golf links course where The Open had recently taken place, to the huge excitement of the locals - but the drive along the coast with its limestone arches and derelict Dunluce Castle was worth seeing, especially as we were lucky to have sunshine.

Hanging out for something like soup and a sandwich for lunch, I was disappointed to be served an immense helping of roast beef with Yorkshire puddings and two sorts of potato, followed by pavlova. How Irish isn't that (apart from the two sorts of spud)?

And then we did another detour, to Bushmills, to make a quick visit to the whiskey distillery there. This led Adrian into talking about Brexit and how it's going to lose jobs once a hard border is in place again - not just whiskey makers but also farmers, who will have to cull thousands of cattle.

Finally, he got onto talking about the Troubles, during yet another detour, this time through Derry, where we got to see some of the dramatic murals in Bogside, the fortified police station, the memorial to the dead, the tall peace walls still standing between Protestant and Catholic, and the statue of two men on opposite sides of a wall leaning across to clasp hands. It was an interesting listen, and clearly close to Adrian's heart - how could it not be, he's a local man who lived through it - and that alone made the day's outing worth while.

Our butler Roy was pleased to be able to find us a spare table at La Terrazza tonight (our late entry onto this cruise meant that everything was already booked solid) - but we were less pleased because, sadly, still sick. But we went through the motions, eating mere mouthfuls of delicious food, feeling guilty about waste and insulting the chef and disappointing the waiter. Such a shame.

The day ended well though, with a performance in the Show Lounge by harpist Phamie Gow, who is Scottish, striking to look at, and a very talented musician who's performed at Carnegie Hall. I really enjoyed her 'Raindrops' composition.

Doing Derry

With thanks to Silversea for this cruise

This morning we slid into Derry/Londonderry (our enrichment lecturer insists people also call it Stroke City as a nod towards trying to reconcile those on opposite sides of the Ulster-Eire political divide).

Still struggling with what I am sure now must be the flu, since it is exponentially worse than a simple cold, I took the shuttle into town from our mooring here at an oil tanker jetty - our proper berth won't be available till tomorrow, which is when we were meant to arrive, before the weather hurried us up.

I didn't/couldn't do much - I walked around the four centuries-old city wall, uniquely in the UK still intact, and got good long views over the surrounding countryside and the rows of neat terraced housing outside the walls. Inside there was a cathedral, a church, lots of stately buildings, a war memorial and the commercial centre, none of which I got to.

I did have a look inside the grand Guildhall, walked out onto the Peace Bridge, and found the fairly new Derry Girls mural, which is beautifully done. That's a TV series that it's really worth trying to find: a comedy about teenagers, against the background of the Troubles. Very funny, with a dark thread.

But most of Derry's richness and long and eventful history passed me by today, because everything has been such a struggle. We'll still be here again tomorrow, though, so I hope to get a bit more of a handle on it.